50 Moments
by Covenmouse
Summary: Fifty moments in time, fifty reasons to love. eventual? 2x5x2
1. Needles

**50 Moments**

**[A/N]:** A collection of fifty moments in time which may, or may not, directly correlate to one another. Worked from a list of prompts on an LJ community.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any part of Gundam Wing or anything related to it. All work is done for entertainment and without profit.

_Needles_

He bloody well _hated_ doctors and Wufei fucking _knew_ it.

Duo cast another baleful look towards the man sitting across the tiny coffee table from him and was further annoyed that not only did Wufei not look up, the boy crossed his legs and turned the page in the magazine he was pretending to read. At least Duo _hoped_ that Wufei was pretending because he certainly didn't want to know what about _Sweet16_ Wufei would find interesting. Convinced that the other boy was pointedly ignoring him, Duo flung himself backward in his seat, crossed his arms and turned his gaze elsewhere; two could play at that game!

The clock in the corner slowly ticked the time away and Duo found himself tapping the heel of one foot nervously upon the floor. The steady, jarring thumb of his boot on the title eventually caused the nurse to begin giving him dirty looks through the glass partition and so he switched to popping his fingers. From the corner of his vision he saw Wufei glance up at him and wince at the sound. Hah! Served him right. Duo managed a few more loud cracks and then had to search for something else to make noise with.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if he had the time to take off his boots and pop his toes, the door opened and a nurse stepped out. "Duo Maxwell?"

The good mood that had begun to creep back into his bones vanished the moment his first name had fled the woman's red-painted lips. By the time that his surname was dying upon her tongue, surly and snappish had settled back on their recently vacated sofa and found their favorite soap on the TV. He hunched a little in his seat and didn't move until Wufei reached across the coffee table and smacked his knee with the newspaper.

"What am I, your dog?"

"Go." The hard look that Wufei shot him boded trouble should he try and duck towards the outside door. Duo knew that he was pouting and wasn't sorry for it; he whined faintly and stared at Wufei. At the door to the examining room, the nurse tapped her shoe impatiently.

"They'll wanna use needles, 'Fei," he grumbled in a voice far more pathetic than he'd _meant_ to use. But if it worked…

"Of course they'll—Rrgh…" Wufei seemed to have caught the look that Duo was giving him. He threw the magazine down on the table and stood up, "Fine."

Though he still didn't like the prospect of going back there, Duo offered Wufei a small smile and climbed to his feet. He ducked past nurse that was glaring at them both with impatience, and pretended to ignore the strange look she offered Wufei when she lead them both back to the examining room.

Duo looked between the one offered seat in the cubicle of a room and the examining table. He moved for the chair, but a hand on his shoulder cut him off and he turned to meet Wufei's rolled eyes. "Get on the table, Duo."

Wufei shoved him gently towards it and then slipped around him to flop into the chair before any argument could be made. Duo stuck his tongue out at him. He hopped up onto the table, though, and swung his legs against the counter beneath it. The Chinese boy rubbed his temples with one hand.

There weren't any magazines in this room, but there were posters to look at; Duo really wished there weren't. Oh, certainly being informed about medical procedures could be helpful if you had to undergo them… at least, that was what people had told them. To Duo, the posters were just yet another ghoulish thing to add to an already nightmarish experience. He shuddered at a detailed poster depicting the lungs and gums of tobacco users. Was all that graphic detail really necessary? He had never smoked!

A shudder ran through his body and Duo tore his eyes away from the poster. There was another beside it that depicted a cut-away of a person's ears, nose and throat. Feeling a little sick, now, all Duo found himself able to think about were the up-close lessons he'd gotten in internal anatomy on the battlefield.

"Duo," Wufei murmured from the corner; the braided boy drug his eyes away from the second poster and met the dark Chinese ones. The understanding there let his fingers release their death grip on the paper-covered bench and he gulped faintly. Wufei knew he hated doctors, he just didn't understand why…

But he understood enough.

The door opened and Sally stepped in, needle ready and armed in her hand, "Okay, Duo… ready for your vaccination?"

[[~~]]


	2. Dying

_Dying_

Five minutes later, the pair was walking back to their shared office with Duo no worse the wear for having been molested with a sharp, pointed object and whom was now sporting fashionably highlighter-pink Band-Aid on the inside of his elbow. At least, Wufei didn't think that he was any worse—Duo thought that he was dying. "Probably infected," the boy grumbled to himself and pulled his cap lower over the messy bangs that were already obscuring his eyes from view. Wufei couldn't fathom how it was that Duo kept from tripping over his own feet when he did that, but the boy always managed. Duo scratched at his arm and Wufei had to roll his eyes.

"If you keep doing that, it _will_ be infected," he promised. The braided boy made a rude noise in response. They stopped to wait on the elevator whose call button had already been pushed by an elderly lady standing there. Duo sagged against Wufei's shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?" The Chinese boy hissed at his companion.

"Dying," Duo proclaimed with a sigh and managed to increase his weight ten-fold. Wufei stumbled, cursed, and then shoved the boy away from him with as much force as he could. The braided idiot, as Wufei had (un)affectionately termed him at the start of their working relationship, danced a few steps away and gave him a grin. Wufei merely scowled in response and brushed imaginary dust from the bottom of his white jacket. Trust Duo to use teasing _him_ as a way to break out of a melancholy.

The elevator dinged, its doors opened and the three of them entered the otherwise unoccupied chamber; Wufei found himself pressed into the middle.

It seemed to be their day to run into Things Which Duo Hated because the moment the doors closed and Wufei realized there was music playing softly through the PA system, he mentally groaned. One finger darted out to hastily push the button for the tenth floor, as if that would make this go any faster. Only a minute, maybe two—certainly Duo couldn't get up to much trouble in that time.

In the mirrored doors across from him, Wufei could just make out Duo's face below the overhanging shadow of the boy's hat. Duo leaned into the wood-paneled side of the box and raised his head a little more so that he could meet Wufei's eyes in the glass. There was a certain spark of mischief to them which Wufei recognized only too well. "_Dying_ my ass," he thought bitterly.

"I'm going to submit a formal complaint to Une," Duo informed the trio with so straight a face that anyone who didn't know him would have thought him entirely serious; those who did only knew that he was as serious about this as he was any prank he fully intended to pull. There was a difference there, Wufei thought, though it was a subtle one. The woman to Wufei's side looked confused by this statement and glanced nervously at the tall youth via the mirror they were all staring at.

"We talk about building a better society—about working to better the human race? Pshaw!" Duo scoffed, shaking his head. The hands which had been tucked into his jean pockets freed themselves in order to wave about as he talked. He narrowly avoided hitting Wufei a few times, all of which Wufei was entirely certain were deliberate. "They need to stop wasting their time bickering over such measly things as firearms and biological warfar and realize that the real problem with the world is… THIS!" After a pause for dramatic effect, Duo threw his hands towards the ceiling.

The elevator dinged, the doors opened and the eighteenth floor saw Duo's dramatic pose. He didn't care and the old lady ducked her head and fled the elevator. A wide-eyed intern replaced her, who scooted carefully towards the far left corner of the box once the doors had closed again. Wufei really didn't blame him.

"Duo, I don't think—"

"Seriously!" Duo interrupted and crossed his arms over his chest. "Think about it! Every office building has elevators, right?"

Wufei shook his head, refusing to play along, "I don't think you can make that kind of generalization—"

"RIGHT?"

"Right!" the intern nodded quite unhelpfully, so far as Wufei was concerned. He gallantly resisted the urge to murder the boy.

"Right!" Duo grinned and continued, "And we've all been in the parliament building at one point or another—they have elevators too!"

Wufei sighed and closed his eyes as he leaned back against the cool paneling behind him. "What is your point, Duo?"

"I'm getting there," The boy made a gesture that Wufei, now with his eyes cracked open just enough to see, thought that he meant to be 'soothing.' It just came off as rather fruity. Wufei snorted and smirked, rolling his eyes behind his eyelids. Duo did not seem to notice this, or else didn't care if he did, and continued on:

"Everyone knows that office workers are zombies and politicians are evil—right?"

"Yes, Duo!" Wufei snapped, though no, he didn't really know that. Completely unperturbed, Duo just grinned.

"Elevator music drove them insane."

For a long moment there was no sound in the elevator save the faint beeps as the floors whizzed by and the light piano of Chopin playing from the overhead speaker. Eventually someone had to say something, and Wufei elected himself since the intern still seemed too scared to do so. "Duo," the corners of Wufei's mouth twitched, "I _like_ this music."

Duo turned his head as Wufei opened his eyes and the two stared at each other. The braided boy's eyes narrowed into an exasperated glare. "You really kill me, Fei."

"That makes twice in one day! I think you may have a problem."

Duo smirked. "Yeah, well what are you going to do about it?"

The elevator dinged, the doors opened and instead of moving for the door, Wufei leveled a smirk at his partner. He raised a single finger and poked the taller boy square in the forehead, "Shoot you in the head."

Leaving the stunned boy behind him, Wufei continued on alone to their office. Behind him the elevator doors dinged and began to close. He caught, just faintly, Duo say to the intern: "Did… Did _he_ just make a zombie crack?"

[[~~]]


	3. Subliminal

_Subliminal_

By the time that he found his way back to the office, Duo had recovered from the shock of Wufei's newly found ability with comebacks. He'd also decided that two could play at that game; if Wufei was going to start proving that he did, at least occasionally, listen to what Duo had to say, then by God Duo was going to reciprocate! Now if only he knew how.

The problem which he kept running into was that his attack had to be subtle, natural… Duo wasn't a terribly subtle person. Sneaky? Sure! But sneaking physically was his forte while verbal sneaking something much more Wufei's area. The more that he pondered it the more that he was finding that it was quite difficult to apply so physical a technique to a decidedly mental skill.

Unless he could somehow find a way to translate what he planned to do into the physical…

A glimmer which might have been a Thought squeezed itself out of his subconscious and poked him. Were this Thought to have a colour Duo decided that it would be red and strangely sensual. The entire thing disturbed him and he shoved the Thought away as he had all its brethren before it. Pesky, bothersome things that caused nothing but trouble the lot of them! The Thought went to sulk upon the rim of his coffee mug.

Duo leaned forward on his elbows, bare skin sliding against the oak desktop, and settled his chin upon his palms. Across the room from him, Wufei was bent over a very similar, beaten oak desk that was filled with scars and nicks but far less graffiti. Duo thought that his little doodles and emblems added some pizzazz; he ignored the dirty looks that Wufei gave it and the mutters of "defacing company property." It wasn't as if Director-General Une ever stepped foot into their office, anyway.

Just looking at the tight, impeccably slicked pony tail Wufei kept his hair in made Duo's scalp ache in sympathy. He wondered, suddenly if Wufei ever got headaches from keeping his hair up too tight and out of nowhere another, scandalously scarlet Thought crept out of his subconscious and went to join its mate on the coffee cup. Duo glared at them, annoyed with both the Thoughts themselves and the undeniable Fact which joined them that told him that he was, technically their mother. So far as Duo was concerned, the three of them could quite happily go to Hell where they belonged.

"Duo, why the hell are you glaring at your coffee mug?" Wufei's voice broke into his glaring match with his Thoughts and Duo looked up to see the other boy glaring at him across the space between their desks. Wufei lifted one delicately shaped brow, shook his head, and looked back down at whatever report he was currently lining with red marks.

As Duo watched, Wufei's glasses slid slightly down his nose and without paying too much attention to what he was doing, the Chinese boy lifted his pen-hand to push them back up again. He left a thin red line along his nose. Red as the third Thought which slipped over to his coffee mug. They were ganging up on him.

[[~~]]


End file.
